Full color organic electroluminescent (EL), also known as organic light-emitting devices or OLED, have recently been demonstrated as a new type of flat panel display. In simplest form, an organic EL device is comprised of an electrode serving as the anode for hole injection, an electrode serving as the cathode for electron injection, and an organic EL medium sandwiched between these electrodes to support charge recombination that yields emission of light. An example of an organic EL device is described in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,356,429. In order to construct a pixilated display device such as is useful, for example, as a television, computer monitor, cell phone display or digital camera display, individual organic EL elements can be arranged as an array of pixels in a matrix pattern. To produce a multicolor display, the pixels are further arranged into subpixels, with each subpixel emitting a different color. This matrix of pixels can be electrically driven using either a simple passive matrix or an active matrix driving scheme. In a passive matrix, the organic EL layers are sandwiched between two sets of orthogonal electrodes arranged in rows and columns. An example of a passive matrix driven organic EL devices is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,380. In an active matrix configuration, each pixel is driven by multiple circuit elements such as transistors, capacitors, and signal lines. Examples of such active matrix organic EL devices are provided in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,550,066, 6,281,634, and 6,456,013.
OLED displays can be made to have one or more colors. Full color OLED devices are also known in the art. Typical full color OLED devices are constructed of pixels having three subpixels that are red, green, and blue in color. Such an arrangement is known as an RGB design. An example of an RGB design is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,281,634. Full color organic electroluminescent (EL) devices have also recently been described that are constructed of pixels having four subpixels that are red, green, blue, and white in color. Such an arrangement is known as an RGBW design. An example of an RGBW device is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication 2002/0186214 A1.
Several approaches to obtaining color displays are known in the art. For example, each differently colored subpixel can be constructed using one or more different OLED materials. These materials are selectively placed on the subpixels with methods including shadow masks, thermal transfer from a donor sheet, or ink jet printing. Another approach to producing a color display is to place OLED materials in a common stack of one or more layers across all the differently colored subpixels and then use one or more different color filters to selectively convert the common OLED color to different colors for each subpixel. In this case the OLED materials are typically arranged so as to produce a broad emission spectrum, also referred to as white emission or white OLED. An example of a white OLED with color filters is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,392,340.
Yet another approach to achieving a color display is to place the OLED emission element within a microcavity structure to enhance emission at a specific wavelength as determined by the optical cavity length of the microcavity. Examples of such microcavity devices are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,405,710 and 5,554,911. In this case, broad emitting OLED materials can be used and, by varying the optical length of the cavity for each differently colored subpixel, different colored emission can be achieved. However, devices constructed with microcavities suffer from the problem that when viewed at various angles, the color of the emission can change. This effect is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,780,174. Therefore, an OLED device using microcavity structures having reduced dependence of perceived color on the angle of view is desired.